The availability of relatively inexpensive transmission of video signals has increased dramatically over the last few years. Specifically, many phone and cable television companies have been allowed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to install bundled telephone and cable television systems using the most recent technologies, typically fiber optic cables. With the proliferation of such systems and the bundling of telephone and video communications, it is readily apparent that in the near future traditional audio telephone communications will most likely migrate towards audio/video communications systems whereby an operator at one site receives audio and video signals which enables the operator to both see and hear what occurs at a remote site, and vise versa.
Initial systems will include merely fixed cameras and video monitors. A method and apparatus for controlling pointers in video images at remote sites from local sites is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/989,126, filed Dec. 11, 1992, entitled System and Method for Teleinteraction, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,444,476, assigned to the Assignee of the present invention and herein incorporated by reference. Other improved systems will most likely include the capability of tracking the operator around the room and enable the operator more freedom while conducting the televideo conference. In yet another configuration, however, one can readily envision where an operator at one site may desire to control the camera at a remote site without requiring the operator at the remote site to reposition the camera. Such systems lend themselves easily to, for example, home security systems where users could initiate a telephone conference to their own home and select and pan through rooms where the cameras are located in order to check the condition of those particular rooms. For example, a user may want to initiate a telephone conference with their own home on an Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) phone-based video link when no one is home. The user could then pan and tilt the remote video camera to view the room and insure its condition.
Presently, some security camera control systems do enable control of cameras remote to an operator's location, and the operator can manipulate controls such as a mouse or a joy stick to cause the camera to pan and tilt in the specified direction. These systems, however, use a separate, digital communication link to send encoded camera control signals to the remote camera, separate from the video signals. A disadvantage of such systems is that the separate communication link limits control of the camera to a specific configuration of the camera and the operator control into a specific, unique system of hardware and low level communications protocols.
In other video communications systems, the idea of imbedding control information on a separate, digital communication link may be overcome in video communications systems by encoding control signals into the actual video stream. These systems typically utilize the currently unused scan lines in the video frames and provide control information which is used by decoding devices at receiving site to add additional information to the picture. For example, in closed caption systems, the unused video lines are used to encode information which is decoded at the receiving site. A decoding device decodes and inserts the decoded information onto the screen so that subtitles appear which correspond to the words being spoken by the characters in the picture. Such systems have proved useful to the hearing impaired and are relatively effective for systems where the receiving unit receives the video signal directly from the source. Examples of such systems include a local television station broadcasting a signal through an antenna where the signal is received by the antenna of a television set or a cable television system receiving and signals with an antenna located at the broadcasting source. That is, the communication link is a direct link with minimal compression or transfer through switching networks.
However, other audio/video communications arenas in which this invention is most useful involve substantial compression, transmission through digital switching networks, and decompression. Such signal decompression, conditioning, switching, and the like typically degrade the information encoded into the unused scan lines of a closed caption video signal so that the signal cannot reasonably be coded into the information to be placed on the screen as subtitles. Furthermore, such communication may occur across several different video format standards (such as NTSC, PAL, SECAM, and HDTV). The conversion of the video signal from one to another of these standards can potentially also modify or remove any unused scan line codes. Thus, it is desirable to provide a more robust approach to embedding control information into transmitted digital signals where the control information experiencing degradation through multiple compression, standards conversions, and/or switching networks remains useable at the remote site to effect the desired control.
Further, current systems which offer any form of embedded control information in audio or video signals also suffer from the requirement that expensive equipment be located at both the sites generating the control information and sites receiving the control information. Such configurations typically are turnkey systems where specific control information generating devices at the local site must match exactly the devices which decode the control information at the remote site. Thus, the signalling and decoding devices tend to be function specific rather than enabling universal control of a number of devices. Ideally, but hereto not yet achieved, the site generating the control information includes a multipurpose device which desirably controls a number of varied remote sites and remote devices. In this manner, a user need not purchase a specific signalling device and place a specifically designed decoding and control device for use at the remote site. Thus, it is further desirable to provide a relatively inexpensive, universal signalling device which is operable to control a number of remote devices and to provide a system having remote device controllers which can interpret a variety of incoming control information from a variety of control information generating sources.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a communication link between remote and local sites which merely requires a two-way video link, which would normally be present rather than two independent, communication links, thereby limiting hardware requirements to relatively inexpensive hardware.
It is a further object of the invention to intercept a visual information stream from the remote site, add iconic visual information to the information stream using a visual signaller that encodes the desired control actions, and send the augmented video signal back to the original site.
It is a further object of the invention that an image processor decodes the visual control information using a visual interpreter at the remote end to determine the required control actions for a remote device by means of remote device control instructions communicated in iconic visual form.
It is a further object of this invention to provide visually iconic information in a format related to the desired control responses to facilitate use and to make use of the command generator to make device control more intuitive to the operator.
It is a further object of this invention to provide iconic information which is visually readable by an operator at a local site and visually readable by an operator at a remote site so that the visually iconic information when read by a human defines to the human the desired control response.
It is a further object of the invention to provide at a local site an apparatus for generating control information to control a device at a remote site where the apparatus generates information in iconic format visually decipherable by a human being and the iconic information describes general and specific operational goals for the remote device.
It is a further object of the invention that the apparatus for generating control information generates iconic information which is decipherable by a plurality of remote device controllers which are operable to control specific devices, and iconic information generated by the apparatus for generating control information indicates operational goals for the controlled device where the operational goal information depends on the particular device being controlled.